Health cover is not optional: immigration law requires it for your whole stay, and the Questura checks it when you apply for and renew your Permesso di Soggiorno. This is also the single most expensive surprise for new non-EU students, so read the numbers before you choose.
If you are an EU / EEA / Swiss citizen
Bring your European Health Insurance Card (TEAM/EHIC) from home. It gives you the same treatment as an Italian citizen at no cost. Take the card and an ID document to the local health authority (ASL) to register with a family doctor.
If you are a non-EU citizen: two routes
Route 1 — Register with the national health service (SSN)
- Cost: €700 per year. This rose from €149.77 on 1 January 2024 and has not come down since.
- It runs by calendar year — 1 January to 31 December, not twelve months from when you pay. Registering in October still costs the full €700 and still expires on 31 December. If you arrive in autumn, this is poor value; consider private cover until January, then switch.
- You need a valid Permesso di Soggiorno to register. The receipt alone is often not enough.
- What you get: a medico di base (family doctor) with free appointments, prescriptions at subsidised rates, and referrals to specialists. This is proper healthcare, not just emergency cover.
- If €700 is beyond you, ask your ASL directly whether any exemption applies to your situation.
Route 2 — Private insurance
- Cheaper, and what most students arrive on. It is the only option before your permit is issued.
- To satisfy the Questura the policy must: carry your name in Western characters, be written in Italian, English, French or Spanish, be valid in the Schengen area, and cover at least €30,000 of medical expenses.
- The catch: cheap policies cover accident and emergency only. They do not give you a family doctor, so routine care means paying a private clinic each time.
The order to do things in
Most students hit the same trap, so plan for it:
- Arrive with private insurance bought at home (your visa required it anyway).
- Apply for the Permesso di Soggiorno — nominally within 8 working days, a deadline that is rarely enforced.
- Once the permit is issued, decide: stay private, or pay the €700 and register with the SSN for a family doctor.
You cannot register with the SSN on day one, so you cannot skip step 1.
No family doctor? Call 116117
If you went the private-insurance route, you have no medico di base — and this is the gap most students fall into. Continuità Assistenziale, still widely called Guardia Medica, fills it.
Call 116117. One number, free to call, covering all of Piedmont.
- You describe your symptoms to the operator, who decides what you need. They will either direct you to the nearest on-call clinic, or send a doctor to your home if you are too unwell to travel.
- It is free, and you do not need to be registered with the SSN. Nobody asks for an insurance policy before treating you. Piedmont explicitly exempts people who are not registered from charges for this service.
- The doctor can prescribe medication and issue a sick-leave certificate, the same as a family doctor would.
When it runs — exactly the hours your family doctor does not:
- Weeknights: 20:00 to 08:00
- Weekends and public holidays: continuously, from 20:00 Friday through to 08:00 Monday
During weekday working hours it is closed, because that is when a medico di base would normally see you. If you have no family doctor and it is a Tuesday afternoon, your options are a private clinic or, for something genuinely urgent, the Pronto Soccorso.
This is not a substitute for registering with the SSN if you are staying for years — you still want a doctor who knows your history. But it does mean that being on private insurance never leaves you with nowhere to turn at 2am.
Where to register, and where to get help
- ASL Città di Torino runs the registrations. The Centri ISI are its desks specifically for foreign citizens and can advise in several languages.
- PoliTo Immigration Desk — ground floor, Corso Castelfidardo 39 — answers health-insurance questions alongside permit questions:
immigration.desk@polito.it
Emergencies
Call 112. It is the single European emergency number and covers ambulance, police and fire across Turin and all of Piedmont. The old numbers (113 police, 115 fire, 118 ambulance) still connect to the same operators, but 112 is the one to remember. Calls are free from any phone, including one with no credit or no SIM.
- Pronto Soccorso = hospital emergency room.
- Continuità Assistenziale (116117) covers nights, weekends and holidays for urgent problems that are not emergencies — see above.
- A farmacia with a green cross handles minor complaints and can tell you which pharmacy is open overnight — every district keeps one on rota.
Verified August 2026 against Politecnico di Torino’s health-insurance page for international students, the Ministry of Health’s rules following the 2024 Budget Law (L. 213/2023), Regione Piemonte on the 112 emergency number, and ASL Città di Torino and Regione Piemonte on Continuità Assistenziale (116117) and healthcare for foreign citizens. The €700 figure is set nationally and can change with each Budget Law — confirm before paying.